Farmers in drought hit districts in this unusually heavy rains monsoon season will get a diesel subsidy of Rs 500 per hectare, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar announced here on Friday at the start of the National Conference on Rabi Campaign, even as the Centre awaits bumper crop production for most key Kharif crops including paddy, pulses, coarse cereals and sugarcane. Oilseeds are the only crop where acreage is lower than...

Climate change and global food shortages could bring unexpected benefits for British farmers in the next two decades, ultimately relieving taxpayers of the burden of subsidising them, Caroline Spelman, environment secretary, has claimed. Ms Spelman said the UK was unlikely to suffer the severe water shortages that scientists predict will afflict other parts of the world, and that British farmers should be able to exploit greater demand for their produce. “Countries that...

The neo-colonial rush for global farmland has gone exponential since the food scare of 2007-2008. Last week's long-delayed report by the World Bank suggests that purchases in developing countries rose to 45m hectares in 2009, a ten-fold jump from levels of the last decade. Two thirds have been in Africa, where institutions offer weak defence. As is by now well-known, sovereign wealth funds from the Mid-East, as well as state-entities from China,...

Although the number of hungry people in the world has fallen below 1 billion thanks to renewed economic growth, it remains “unacceptably” high, two United Nations agencies stressed today. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced in a new report that 925 million people will suffer chronic hunger, down nearly 100 million from 1.02 billion in 2009. “But with a child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment-related problems, hunger remains...

Canada hosted this year’s G-20 and as a follow-up it had a conference for Speakers of Second Chambers—or of unicameral ones where relevant—from September 2-5. The theme was Food Security and Financial Crisis. The burden of the speeches was predictable. Food security for most people is about agriculture and its protection. It is about food production and everyone wished they could grow more food. Others took a neo-Malthusian line that the...